The Age of Innocence eBook

These successive statements were received with the
proper expressions of amusement, incredulity and gratitude;
and the visit was breaking up in a vein of mild pleasantry
when the door opened to admit the Countess Olenska,
who entered in bonnet and mantle followed by the unexpected
figure of Julius Beaufort.

There was a cousinly murmur of pleasure between the
ladies, and Mrs. Mingott held out Ferrigiani’s
model to the banker. “Ha! Beaufort,
this is a rare favour!” (She had an odd foreign
way of addressing men by their surnames.)

“Thanks. I wish it might happen oftener,”
said the visitor in his easy arrogant way. “I’m
generally so tied down; but I met the Countess Ellen
in Madison Square, and she was good enough to let
me walk home with her.”

“Ah—­I hope the house will be gayer,
now that Ellen’s here!” cried Mrs. Mingott
with a glorious effrontery. “Sit down—­sit
down, Beaufort: push up the yellow armchair;
now I’ve got you I want a good gossip.
I hear your ball was magnificent; and I understand
you invited Mrs. Lemuel Struthers? Well—­I’ve
a curiosity to see the woman myself.”

She had forgotten her relatives, who were drifting
out into the hall under Ellen Olenska’s guidance.
Old Mrs. Mingott had always professed a great admiration
for Julius Beaufort, and there was a kind of kinship
in their cool domineering way and their short-cuts
through the conventions. Now she was eagerly
curious to know what had decided the Beauforts to
invite (for the first time) Mrs. Lemuel Struthers,
the widow of Struthers’s Shoe-polish, who had
returned the previous year from a long initiatory
sojourn in Europe to lay siege to the tight little
citadel of New York. “Of course if you
and Regina invite her the thing is settled.
Well, we need new blood and new money—­and
I hear she’s still very good-looking,”
the carnivorous old lady declared.

In the hall, while Mrs. Welland and May drew on their
furs, Archer saw that the Countess Olenska was looking
at him with a faintly questioning smile.

“Of course you know already—­about
May and me,” he said, answering her look with
a shy laugh. “She scolded me for not giving
you the news last night at the Opera: I had her
orders to tell you that we were engaged—­but
I couldn’t, in that crowd.”

The smile passed from Countess Olenska’s eyes
to her lips: she looked younger, more like the
bold brown Ellen Mingott of his boyhood. “Of
course I know; yes. And I’m so glad.
But one doesn’t tell such things first in a
crowd.” The ladies were on the threshold
and she held out her hand.

“Good-bye; come and see me some day,”
she said, still looking at Archer.